(More artists from the past appear out of nowhere!)
As someone matures, they start a mysterious rewinding process, much like birth-in-reverse, and ghosts from the past leap out of every nook and cranny.
This week, I was visited by the spirit of artist, Alberto Vargas, who’d suddenly returned to life.
I’ve always liked this artist’s work, yet the gallery chain where I worked for many years, Dyansen, handled several commercial artists but not Vargas’ art. Alberto Vargas by this time had achieved worldwide notoriety and was attracting the attention of art collectors worldwide.
Joaquin Alberto Vargas y Chávez was born on February 9, 1896, in Arequipa, Perú, the son of a well-known Peruvian photographer. Vargas, considered one of the leading pin-up girl illustrators and artists, perfected the use of watercolors, often in combination with the airbrush, during his lifetime.
Vargas had been employed early in his career by showman, Florenz Ziegfeld. Vargas painted one of Ziegfeld stars, Olive Thomas, and the work was prominently displayed in the lobby of a New York Ziegfeld theatre for years, before being sold to a private collector.
Olive Thomas, in addition to being a Ziegfeld Follies star, had once been unhappily married to actress Mary Pickford’s brother, Jack, and many believe her husband’s drinking, drug use and philandering drove her to take poison in the early morning hours of September 6, 1920. Also vacationing with her in Paris at the time of her death on September 10th, was her close friend, as well as former Ziegfeld Follies star, Mae Murray.
Vargas later did work for several Hollywood studios creating movie posters, and one such design was for the 1933 film, The Sin of Nora Moran, starring Zita Johann. Johann, an Austrian American actress is best remembered for her role opposite Boris Karloff in the 1932 film, The Mummy.
Other well-known actresses painted by Vargas included Ziegfeld’s wife, Billie Burke, silent screen actresses Bessie Love and Nita Naldi, and 1950’s sex symbols Mamie Van Doren and Marilyn Monroe.
During the 1940s, Esquire magazine featured many of the Vargas pin-ups, some of which I’ve featured below. In 1959, Playboy magazine magnate, Hugh Hefner, began using Vargas’ work, which will be featured in a separate Keith’s Theatre column.
Alberto Vargas died on December 30, 1982, in Los Angeles, California.
Wikipedia’s biography of Alberto Vargas can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Vargas
Until next time…
